Vietnam to spend $20M to push open-source software

[Renew Deal]

Government aims to cut costs, boost domestic development, alleviate copyright infringement

By David Legard, IDG News Service March 10, 2004

Vietnam's Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) will spend $20 million over the next four years to speed up development and deployment of open-source software in the country. This will enable Vietnam to cut software buying costs, boost its domestic software industry and alleviate copyright infringement, a government report said Tuesday.

The announcement coincides with the holding of the Third Asia Open Source Software Symposium in Hanoi.

One of the goals of the plan is to develop localized application software based on open-source code for use by private businesses, state-owned companies and the government sector, according to the report. This will also help boost the domestic software development market, which has been identified as a key economic sector for the country.

The aim is to gain experience in open-source to enable Vietnam to "apply open-source software to replace all commercial software" and "to make very effort to replace Windows with Linux," according to the report.
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http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/03/10/HNvietnamopensource_1.html